Publication date: October 5th, 2021
A paranormal romantic comedy at the (possible) end of the world.
All Callie wanted was a quiet weekend with her best friend. She promised her mom she could handle running her family’s escape room business while her mom is out of town. Instead a Satanic cult shows up, claiming that the prop spell book in one of the rooms is the real deal, and they need it to summon the right hand of the devil. Naturally they take Callie and her friend, Mag, along with them. But when the summoning reveals a handsome demon in a leather jacket named Luke who offers to help Callie stop the cult from destroying the world, her night goes from weird to completely strange.
As the group tries to stay one step ahead of the cult, Callie finds herself drawn to the annoying (and annoyingly handsome) Luke. But what Callie doesn’t know is that Luke is none other than Luke Morningstar, Prince of Hell and son of the Devil himself. Callie never had time for love, and with the apocalypse coming closer, is there room for romance when all hell’s about to break loose?
From New York Times bestselling author Gwenda Bond, Not Your Average Hot Guy is a hilarious romantic comedy about two people falling in love, while the fate of the world rests on their shoulders.
**
I was first attracted to this novel because the cover blurb was intriguing and sounded like fun, however I have to admit it took me a long time to actually finish reading it as I stopped and started multiple times. There is another popular series featuring a son of Satan that I absolutely adore that is full of both romance and comedy so perhaps that colored my expectations going into this one. Unfortunately the biggest stumbling block for me was Luke because he was just too nice and dare I say, safe? I was expecting him to have an edge to him but there really wasn’t one, which was a cause of some disappointment.
Callie helps run her mom’s escape room business using her knowledge of occult history to design new room and challenges, including the Chamber of Black Magic. The first group of the night to attempt the room are an odd bunch that turn out to be a cult aiming to steal the grimoire featured in the room and use it summon the demon Lucifuge Rofocale. Rofocale is one of Satan’s henchmen and Luke’s supervisor, and because Luke has been unable to harvest any souls he asks if can respond to the summoning instead. Once Luke appears in Rofocale’s place he finds the cult wants to obtain the Holy Lance in order to use it to bring Hell to the earth realm. He also discovers that the cult members are holding Callie and her best friend Mag hostage in order to turn them over as part of the trade. Then the race is on for Callie and Luke is on to foil the cult’s plans and get to their HEA before earth is destroyed by hellfire and brimstone!
Granted this introduction probably qualifies as a meet cute but the book never rises to what I would qualify as a romance. While there is an attraction between them, the book to me ends up as more of a YA/NA paranormal comedy romp with a hint of more to come. Considering how different Callie and Luke are especially in their backgrounds, I think they fall more into an instalust category than a romantic one. Since this is the first book in the series hopefully the future storylines will be able to build on this one and present more that could move this into an adult paranormal romance theme which I would think would allow it to keep a broader audience entertained.
Thank you to Netgalley and St. Martin’s Press for the ARC to review!